Quotes by Russian Authors - Page 8

To be successful, any business requires a concentrated investment of time and energy; wherein each stage of the development has its tactics and priorities, in regards to which activities and when it makes sense to invest the efforts in.
Sahara Sanders
There are many faiths, but the spirit is one — in me, and in you, and in him. So that if everyone believes himself, all will be united; everyone be himself and all will be as one.
Leo Tolstoy
If one wanted to crush and destroy a man entirely, to mete out to him the most terrible punishment ... all one would have to do would be to make him do work that was completely and utterly devoid of usefulness and meaning.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness...
Leo Tolstoy
I once took a city with five men and a lame goat. If I can do that, you can convince the necromancers to pledge themselves to you. Do this or die.
Ilona Andrews
Emily mostly perceived her habit to write down notes as being one of the ways she could use to preserve moments of life.
Sahara Sanders
So you want me to track down a supernaturally fast sniper who can disappear into thin air, retrieve your maps, and do it so nobody finds out what I'm doing or why?''Exactly.'I sighed. 'I'll get the paperwork.
Ilona Andrews
Not only will you sleep with me, but you will say 'please.'"I stared at him, shocked. The smile widened. "You will say 'please' before and 'thank you' after." Nervous laughter bubbled up. "You've gone insane. All that peroxide in your hair finally did your brain in, Goldilocks.
Ilona Andrews
Even at the time—twenty years old—I said to myself: better to go hungry, to go to prison, to be a tramp, than to sit at an office desk ten hours a day. There is no particular daring in this vow, but I have not broken it and shall not do so. The wisdom of my grandfathers sat in my head: we are born for the pleasure of work, fighting, love, we are born for that and nothing else. (Guy de Maupassant)
Isaac Babel
In the language of an actor, to know is synonymous with to feel
Konstantin Stanislavski
Happily chatting and counting pocket change, patting each other on the back and whistling foolish songs, we go out on the thousand-legged street and miraculously turn into passersby.
Sasha Sokolov
Compassion is the chief law of human existence.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Life is a movie. You are the director in it. The choices you make, are the things that you will see. After you make a choice, there will be no going back, only simple things that will erase it.
Victoriya Anissimova
He raised his hand in a peaceful gesture. "You need to relax a bit, dove. Like Mouse over there. You trust me, don't you, Mouse?""Nope!""Ahhh, I'm hurt. Nobody likes me.
Ilona Andrews
The State is not God. It has not the right to take away what it cannot restore when it wants to.
Anton Chekhov
I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip. And the highest enjoyment of timelessness―in a landscape selected at random―is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone. A thrill of gratitude to whom it may concern―to the contrapuntal genius of human fate or to tender ghosts humoring a lucky mortal.
Vladimir Nabokov
They ought to find out how to vaccinate for love, like smallpox.
Leo Tolstoy
For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm. There are not many such books. All the rest is either topical trash or what some call the Literature of Ideas, which very often is topical trash coming in huge blocks of plaster that are carefully transmitted from age to age until somebody comes along with a hammer and takes a good crack at Balzac, at Gorki, at Mann.
Vladimir Nabokov
Often, exactly big complexes force an individual to achieve their big goals and massive success.
Sahara Sanders
This life you cry up so much is what I wanted to extinguish by suicide, whereas my dream, my dream—oh, it has revealed to me a great, new, regenerated intensity of life!
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Friends we shall never be, you know that yourself. Whether we shall be the happiest or the wretchedest of people--that's in your hands.
Leo Tolstoy
When I want somebody to read to, To match a dream with tuneful phrase,It is my nurse that I pay heed to,Companion of my youthful days,Or, following a boring dinner,A neihbour comes in, who I corner,Catch at his coat tails suddenlyAnd choke him with a tragedy,Or, (here I am no longer jesting),Haunted by rhymes and yearning's ache,I roam beside my country lakeAnd scare a flock of wild ducks resting:Hearing my strophes' sweet-toned chants,They fly off from the banks at once.
Alexander Pushkin
I dedicate this to all those who did not live to tell it. And may they please forgive me for not having seen it all nor remembered it all, for not having divined all of it - from The Gulag Archipelago
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Very well." He sat cross-legged on the floor of the cage. "You haven't run off so you want to talk. I will hear your explanation now.""Really, Your Majesty? So good of you to condescend. I'll try to use small words and go slow.""You're wasting my time. I know Jim betrayed me and you're covering for him. This is your chance to dazzle me wih your brillance or baffle me with your bullshit. You won't get another. When I get out, I won't be in the mood to listen.
Ilona Andrews
Man lives consciously for himself but unconsciously he serves as an instrument for the accomplishment of historical and social ends.
Leo Tolstoy
For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments. And all the time your soul is craving and longing for something else. And in vain does the dreamer rummage about in his old dreams, raking them over as though they were a heap of cinders, looking in these cinders for some spark, however tiny, to fan it into a flame so as to warm his chilled blood by it and revive in it all that he held so dear before, all that touched his heart, that made his blood course through his veins, that drew tears from his eyes, and that so splendidly deceived him!
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Hope, tell me how could it be possible that grief and happiness are scattered all over the world so unevenly? Why do some people get all the troubles and misfortunes while the others are intoxicated with the abundance of material belongings, fat bellies and money? Why is there such injustice? Or, maybe, we are mistaken it’s unfair!?
Igor Eliseev
- You take evil for good. It's a passing crisis. It's the result of your illness, perhaps.- You do despise me! It's simply that I don't want to do good, I want to do evil, and it has nothing to do with illness.- Why do evil?- So that everything will be destroyed. Oh, how nice it would be if everything were destroyed! You know, Alyosha, I sometimes think of doing a lot of harm. I would do it for a long while secretly and then suddenly everyone would find out. Everyone will stand around and point their fingers at me and I will look at them all. That would be awfully nice.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
they may all be drunk at my place, but they're all honest, and though we do lie-because I lie, too-in the end we'll lie our way to the truth
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
This (San Francisco) is the most beautiful city in America, Probably because it looks nothing like America
Ilya Ilf
Let me be cursed, let me be base and vile, but let me also kiss the hem of that garment in which my God is clothed; let me be following the devil at the same time, but still I am also your son, Lord, and I love you, and I feel a joy without which the world cannot stand and be.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
This is the way it ought to be!" said the Little Russian, returning. "Because, mark you, mother dear, a new heart is coming into existence, a new heart is growing up in life. All hearts are smitten in the conflict of interests, all are consumed with a blind greed, eaten up with envy, stricken, wounded, and dripping with filth, falsehood, and cowardice. All people are sick; they are afraid to live; they wander about as in a mist. Everyone feels only his own toothache. But lo, and behold! Here is a Man coming and illuminating life with the light of reason, and he shouts: 'Oh, ho! you straying roaches! It's time, high time, for you to understand that all your interests are one, that everyone has the need to live, everyone has the desire to grow!' The Man who shouts this is alone, and therefore he cries aloud; he needs comrades, he feels dreary in his loneliness, dreary and cold. And at his call the stanch hearts unite into one great, strong heart, deep and sensitive as a silver bell not yet cast. And hark! This bell rings forth the message: 'Men of all countries, unite into one family! Love is the mother of life, not hate!' My brothers! I hear this message sounding through the world!
Maxim Gorky
Many years ago someone told me something that I flatly refused to accept. And I still don't accept it now, despite all the times I've seen it proved right."The common good and the individual good rarely coincide..."Sure, I know, it's true.But some truths are probably worse than lies.
Sergei Lukyanenko
Oh, Gods."His eyes shone with want and predatory satisfaction. "The name's William. It's a common mistake.
Ilona Andrews
A word devoid of thought is a dead thing, and a thought unembodied in words remains a shadow.
Lev S. Vygotsky
In the pentagram, the Pythagoreans found all proportions well-known in antiquity: arithmetic, geometric, harmonic, and also the well-known golden proportion, or the golden ratio. ... Probably owing to the perfect form and the wealth of mathematical forms, the pentagram was chosen by the Pythagoreans as their secret symbol and a symbol of health. - Alexander Voloshinov [As quoted in Stakhov]
Alexey Stakhov
The concurrence of two elements is necessary for bringing about a revolution; and by revolution I do not mean the street warfare, nor the bloody conflicts of two parties—both being mere incidents dependent upon many circumstances—but the sudden overthrow of institutions which are the outgrowths of centuries past, the sudden uprising of new ideas and new conceptions, and the attempt to reform all political and economical institutions in a radical way—all at the same time. Two separate currents must converge to come to that result: a widely spread economic revolt, tending to change the economical conditions of the masses, and a political revolt, tending to modify the very essence of the political organisation—an economical change, supported by an equally important change of political institutions.
Pyotr Kropotkin
To gain control over a large number of people you do not have to place them in containers with suction caps attached to their bodies like in the film “The Matrix”. It is enough to create an all-encompassing information network because then people will automatically take their places in its cells.
Vadim Zeland
When I thought of myself, of the feelings I had, of the things I thought I understood so well, I imagined myself somehow abstractly, because that other visual recollection was painful and unpleasant for me. No sooner would I call to mind my physical appearance than the finest, most lyrical, wonderful visions would vanish in an instant - so monstrous was its disparity with the intangible, glittering world that existed in my imagination. It seemed to me that there could be no greater contrast than that between my inner life and my outward appearance; sometimes I even imagined that I was trapped in someone else's strange, almost hateful body.
Gaito Gazdanov
His heart missed a beat and never regretted the lovely loss.
Vladimir Nabokov
Though the children did not know Levin well and did not remember when they had last seen him, they did not feel towards him any of that strange shyness and antagonism so often felt by children towards grown-up people who 'pretend,' which causes them to suffer as painfully. Pretence about anything sometimes deceives the wisest and shrewdest man, but, however cunningly it is hidden, a child of the meanest capacity feels it and is repelled by it.
Leo Tolstoy
Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one's enemies.
Leon Trotsky
If you go on touching me, I’ll catch fire before your eyes.
Olga Goa
There are no conditions to which a man cannot become accustomed.
Leo Tolstoy
he was one of those diplomats who like and know how to work, and, despite his laziness, he occasionally spent nights at his desk.
Leo Tolstoy
You do not know you cannot know the difficulty of the life of a politician. It means every minute of the day or night every ounce of your energy. There is no rest no relaxation. Enjoyment? A politician does not know the meaning of the word.
Nikita Khrushchev
And now, it turns out that our mother’s name means benevolence and generosity to people as objects of love! This is both a unique and beautiful name, Charity. “It was one of life’s cruel ironies,” I thought, “that a midwife, or whoever filled in the documents, must have known our mom’s name. I suppose she had a lot of fun naming us Hope and Faith! Or, on the contrary, she sympathized.
Igor Eliseev
No zek had the right to stay one second in his workroom without the supervision of a free employee because prudence dictated that the prisoner would be bound to use that unsupervised second to break into the steel safe with a lead pencil, photograph its secret documents with a trouser button, explode an atom bomb, and fly to the moon.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
... she had painted her lips and was holding in her hollowed hands a beautiful, banal, Eden-red apple.
Vladimir Nabokov
Nowadays you have to be a scientist if you want to be a killer. No, no, I was neither. Ladies and gentleman of the jury, the majority of sex offenders that hanker for some throbbing, sweet-moaning, physical but not necessarily coital, relation with a girl-child, are innocuous, inadequate, passive, timid strangers who merely ask the community to allow them to pursue their practically harmless, so-called aberrant behavior, their little hot wet private acts of sexual deviation without the police and society cracking down upon them. We are not sex fiends! We do not rape as good soldiers do. We are unhappy, mild, dog-eyed gentlemen, sufficiently well integrated to control our urge in the presence of adults, but ready to give years and years of life for one chance to touch a nymphet. Emphatically, no killers are we. Poets never kill.
Vladimir Nabokov
Dear and most respected bookcase! I welcome your existence, which has for over one hundred years been devoted to the radiant ideals of goodness and justice.
Anton Chekhov
Every reader can live One Thousand and One Lives; every fiction author can have One Thousand and One Masks, and their talent can have One Thousand and One Facets.
Lara Biyuts
Modern formulaic society will try to make you "normal," rushing to call pseudoscientific anything you can do that they can’t.
Sahara Sanders
Oh, this tormenting concern that your neighbor’s life might be better than yours! And how great it feels when you realize that the truth is exactly the opposite; and we’re not so different after all. Nоthing brings true neighbors together like a little friendly competition.
Igor Eliseev
The question of bread for myself is a material question, but the question of bread for my neighbor is a spiritual question.
Nikolai A. Berdyaev
It is not really wise to make too many assumptions when you don’t yet have all the facts to do so. You may believe your conclusions are logical, while they may turn out to be totally wrong.
Sahara Sanders
Dina, I’m bored,” Caldenia announced.Too bad. I guaranteed her safety, not entertainment. “What about your game?”Her Grace gave me a shrug. “I’ve beaten it five times on the Deity setting. I’ve reducedParis to ashes because Napoleon annoyed me. I’ve eradicated Gandhi. I’ve crushed George Washington. Empress Wu had potential, so I eliminated her before we even cleared Bronze Age. The Egyptians are my pawns. I dominate the planet. Oddly, I find myself mildly fascinated by Genghis Khan. A shrewd and savage warrior, possessing a certain magnetism. I left him with a single city, and I periodically make ridiculous demands that I know he can’t meet so I can watch him squirm.
Ilona Andrews
We always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
To be young and not to know how, is bearable; to be old and not have the strength, is too great a weight to carry. And what's is so painful you can't sense your powers leaving you. It's hard for an old man to ensure such blows!
Ivan Turgenev
Blest who was youthful in his youth;blest who matured at the right time;who gradually the chill of lifewith years was able to withstand;who never was addicted to strange dreams;who did not shun the fashionable rabble;who was at twenty fop or blade,and then at thirty, profitably married;who rid himself at fiftyof private and of other debts;who fame, money, and rankin due course calmly gained;about whom lifelong one kept saying:N. N. is an excellent man.But it is sad to think that to no purposeyouth was given us,that we betrayed it every hour,that it duped us;that our best wishes,that our fresh dreamings,in quick succession have decayedlike leaves in putrid autumn.It is unbearable to see before oneonly of dinners a long series,to look on life as on a rite,and in the wake of the decorous crowdto go, not sharing with iteither general views, or passions.
Alexander Pushkin